


Easy

by shaenie



Category: LOTR RPS
Genre: Lotrips - Freeform, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-05-24
Updated: 2005-05-24
Packaged: 2017-10-12 04:55:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/121020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shaenie/pseuds/shaenie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In spite of the way they had all slotted together as though designed to fit, Billy is still surprised to find it so <i>easy</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Easy

The city was big enough that they surely could have found something more productive to do on a Sunday afternoon than sit around on the beach and get pissed, but that was what they were doing, and Billy found that he didn't much mind. After nearly six solid hours of surfing, he was too tired to bother with going out anyhow. Sitting here under an improbably paisley beach umbrella (Viggo's contribution, and Billy really rather felt that the man ought to have a better eye, being an artist and all) was all right. Being on his fifth or sixth beer was probably a factor in the matter, but he honestly couldn't bring himself to care.

Elijah and Orlando were thumb-wrestling (one two three four, I declare a thumb war!) and the rest of them (except Viggo) were watching with inebriated disinterest that probably looked a lot like fascination to the untrained eye. It was, Billy told himself, only because there was really not much else to look at. The waves -- which this morning had been glorious, unmatched by any thus-far experienced in Billy's short surfing career -- had settled into calmly seething swells, and the sky was nearly the same color as the ocean, an uninspired dull grey distinctly lacking the display of spectacular sunsets that New Zealand tended toward. Billy felt that his lack of interest was New Zealand's own fault, and that if it didn't show off so regularly, he wouldn't be so put off by this singularly mediocre sunset.

Viggo was a few yards away on the beach, arranging broken shells and bits of twig into something he referred to as a detritus poem; this might have been of some interest to Billy, except that there honestly wasn't much in the way of detritus on New Zealand's pale and pristine beaches, which made the poem rather short. More like a detritus stanza, really, which had been taken in wholly with a single glance.

"Prick!" Elijah trilled, and Billy was fairly sure it was a crime against nature, _that_ word in _that_ voice. Orlando snorted amusement, his larger, longer thumb pinning Elijah's easily in place, in spite of some animated wrist-twisting that threatened to become full-body flailing from Elijah.

"Hobbit thumbs," Orlando said, his voice kind of low and tolling, so that it sounded more like an ancient curse than some throw-away beach mockery.

Elijah snarled something filthy and ridiculous -- at least falling from his shapely pink lips -- and tugged his hand free to flounce backward in the sound. Billy thought of six year old girls and smiled.

"Let's do something else," Elijah said, an air of pronouncement or command skirting his words. He flailed around in the sand a bit, and little sand mountains formed in the angles of his limbs, Billy saw. He swallowed a mouthful of beer and tipped his head in question, but couldn't be arsed to actually speak.

It was okay, because Dom did it for him. "Such as?" he invited, and Billy saw Dom had tipped his head just like Billy had, the same direction and the same degree. Billy grinned.

"Hrmph," Elijah said, and pushed up onto his elbows, using Orlando's neoprene-clad thigh for leverage beneath his feet and he worked his way into a sitting position. "Dunno. Something."

"Brilliant plan," Billy deadpanned, and Dom snorted quiet laughter next to him.

"Fuck off," Elijah said, heatless and almost affectionate. "Let's play a game."

Three of them -- Orlando, Dom, and Billy -- exchanged looks. Elijah watched them do it, eyes bright, face hectic with heat and beer and expectation. Orlando rolled one shoulder. Dom's beer tipped slightly to the left.

"What did you have in mind?" Billy asked, speaking for all of them.

"Like a party game," Elijah said, and then held up a placating hand when Dom opened his mouth to object. "More like a getting to know you game," he hedged. Dom crinkled one eye closed doubtfully, but shut his mouth, apparently willing to at least hear Elijah out. "Let's tell each other things." Elijah's face kind of squinched up in thought, and Billy felt his lips curling up in response, a helpless result, involuntary, like sneezing.

Some things, he had always known, were like that for him, were the hilarity equivalent of a sneeze. Some things were just funny, no matter what. Elijah making that face was just funny, knee-jerk, nothing to be done about it.

He glanced at Dom, and saw he was biting his bottom lip, but his lips were curling as well.

Billy and Dom were on the same wavelength as far as amusement went, and had been from the very beginning.

"You're talking about truth or dare," Orlando offered (he wasn't smiling, apparently completely unmoved by Elijah's squinchy-face) dismissively, clearly unimpressed.

Elijah's squinchy-face deepened; Dom tittered almost silently. Billy put a hand on his knee, feeling slick neoprene and grains of sand, and beneath it the deep, good warmth of Dom's skin, and squeezed supportively -- _Steady on, mate_ \-- and Dom subsided.

"More like just truth," Elijah decided, his face relaxing into something less mirth-inducing, much to Billy's relief. "Just things. You know. Facts. Fellowship Facts." He grinned brightly, and Billy could hear the capitalization. "Fun Fellowship Facts." Elijah squinted at Orlando. "It'll be good, because I made it up," he said seriously, then added, "With alliteration."

Sometimes, Billy forgot that Elijah wasn't what you would call an "experienced" drunk. This was not one of those times.

Beside Billy, Dom trembled with suppressed merriment. Billy patted his knee comfortingly. "And since you made it up," Billy said, coming to Dom's defense, "you won't mind going first."

For a moment, Elijah just looked at him, mouth opening and closing soundlessly, an astonishingly good impression of a fish out of water. Then, all in a rush, his voice high and nervy, he said, "I'mstillavirgin!" Then he spilled his beer.

None of them said anything for long, prickling moments. Elijah righted his beer bottle with careful, controlled movements, his eyes fixed on the glass, his face the kind of red that made Billy wonder if it was possible for his head to actually pop, like the bulb of an overheated thermometer, the pressure of the mercury too much for the fragile glass to withstand.

Dom and Billy exchanged a look, and silently decided that they had no comment regarding this confession by means of a quirked brow from Dom and a miniscule headshake combined with closed "Our Lord who art in Heaven" eyes from Billy.

Orlando, of course, had a comment for every occasion. Though, in his defense, this one was uncommonly gentle.

"When would you have had _time_?" he said, and regarded Elijah a little more warmly than the beer could really account for. "You've done nearly as many movies as Ian." He didn't sound envious in the least (even if it was an exaggeration -- Orlando had a talent for saying ludicrous things as if he meant every word utterly). If anything, he sounded slightly anxious.

"Which Ian?" Elijah asked pointlessly, but he was smiling at Orlando, and his blush was subsiding.

"Either," Orlando shrugged, and gave Elijah a crooked but rather charming 'I have no real idea how good looking I am, and thus I'm nervous as hell right now,' sort of smile.

It was disgusting.

"Disgusting," Dom echoed, and tipped his head back to drain the remainder of his beer.

 _Be nice,_ Billy thought, but didn't say, since there wasn't likely any need. Dom was rarely mean, and on the odd occasion when he was, he shook it off quickly.

Also, Elijah seemed hardly even aware of Dom's opinion on the matter. He only had huge blue orbs for Orlando, at the moment. "Your turn," he insisted, and smiled a gap-toothed but rather charming 'I have no real idea how good looking I am, and thus I'm nervous as hell right now,' smile back at Orlando.

Clearly a match made in the filthiest bowels of the cruelest Hell. With Billy's luck, he was surely destined to spend the next three bloody years watching them make calf eyes at one another, and he'd walk in on them in a state of semi-undress at least once during all of that. God save him from sexually ambivalent pretty boys just coming in to the understanding of all the wonderful things they can do with their pricks.

Billy tipped his beer in their direction in a silent toast, and killed the bottle. Dom was pressing a new one into his hand and relieving him of the empty almost before he'd swallowed what was in his mouth.

"Er," Orlando said, clearly too distracted to be judged in any way mentally competent (though Billy wasn't actually sure mental competence was up there on Orlando's list of special attributes even on a normal day), and Elijah, apparently utterly oblivious to Billy and Dom sitting _right there_ , Viggo down the beach (currently on his knees and smoothing out large areas of sand with both hands, muttering to himself), or anyone else that happened by (it was a public beach, after all, and it was hardly deserted), reached out and skimmed blunt fingertips along the prickle of Orlando's Mohawk. Orlando smiled a little, eyes crinkling agreeably, and caught Elijah's hand in one of his.

And then didn't let go.

He and Elijah stared silently at their hands for several seconds, and then stared at each other, and then smiled (Elijah flushing, Orlando looking like he was giving some serious consideration to all the wonderful things he could do with his prick right at that very moment) into one another's far too lovely faces.

Billy considered ruining the moment by spewing in their laps, and then dragged himself upright instead. "Right, 'm going for a stroll. You lads… practice safe sex. Preferably someplace with walls."

He sensed more than saw Dom get up and follow, and glanced over when Dom fell into step with him. "Shortest game ever," Dom said thoughtfully, and veered sharply to the right to track footprints across Viggo's newly smoothed sand. Billy kept walking, and ignored Viggo chasing Dom around him in circles as he made his way up the beach. Eventually Viggo gave up, and Dom fell into step beside him again.

He'd lost his beer at some point during the chase, and was breathing hard and half-laughing still. Billy handed his over, and wasn't the least bit surprised when Dom drained the rest of it.

"It's not that I care if they shag," Dom said after several silent minutes. He stopped walking and hunkered down in the sand. Billy stopped, too, and turned to see Dom stuffing damp sand into the neck of the empty beer bottle for reasons that likely made sense only in Dominic's head.

He didn't ask.

"But really," Dom said, inspecting the level of sand in the bottle and bouncing back to his feet, apparently satisfied. "Do they have to be so bloody saccharine about the whole thing?"

"They're young," Billy said.

"Orlando's my age," Dom objected, and started walking again. This time Billy fell into step with him.

"Not in every way, though," Billy said. "In some ways, Orlando's closer to Elijah's age than to yours."

"You telling me I'm especially mature, Bills?" Dom asked, peering sideways at him with sly eyes, lips curled into a quintessential 'Dom' smirk.

Billy snorted. "Nah, mate. I'm telling you you're precocious."

"Don't try and distract me with your thirty-year-old vocabulary," Dom objected, and jutted his chin and tossed Billy a wink.

Billy grinned.

The sun was merely a reddish glow across the horizon, and the breeze was getting brisk.

Dom slung an arm around Billy's shoulders, skin surprisingly warm considering the rapidly dropping temperature. He was still carrying the beer bottle full of sand in one hand, and Billy made a conscious decision never to ask. Instead he let himself enjoy the feel of Dom's warm arm, listen to the mellow roll of the ocean, let himself be weary and slightly pissed and comfortable in that way that isn't quite physical comfort, but is lovely in spite of that.

"I think," Dom said after some time, "we should sleep together."

His tone was almost offhand, musing, but Billy knew Dom, and he could hear the underlying uncertainty.

"Oh, you do, do you?" he replied, managing to replicate Dom's offhand tone almost exactly, because he understood it. Saying a thing like that (and it was so like Dominic, too, no beating around the bush, no lead up, no couching it in more ambiguous terminology) if you weren't sure of the reception it was going to receive, it was definitely best to sound as much like something that didn't matter much one way or another as you could. He was amused, a little, but he could afford to be. He wasn't the one who'd laid it all out like that, wasn't the one that had actually made the declaration, though that wasn't to say he hadn't thought it.

"Yeah," Dom said, and now he sounded faintly truculent. "I mean, why not? Why should we be the only ones without a regular outlet and all?"

"A regular outlet, hmm?" Billy murmured, and Dom tensed a little. "That's what it would be, then?"

He didn't buy it. Not for a second, but it was best to be sure.

Billy felt the drag of Dom's arm around his shoulder an instant before he actually stopped walking so they both ended up stopping at the same time, and Dom took a half step back, just enough so he wasn't directly in Billy's face, though he still had one arm sort of around Billy's shoulders and didn't seemed inclined to remove it.

Dom looked at him for a long moment, eyes shadowed with this back to the sun so Billy couldn't see what was in them, but Dom's lips were pursed as if in thought, and his head was slightly cocked. Billy -- he knew his face was directly in the path of the setting sun, and thus clearly visible to Dom -- arched a brow and asked mildly, "Fuck buddies?"

And it was funny, wasn't it, how easy this was turning out. How easy it all had turned out to be, with Dom.

Dom's lips quirked into a smile, as if answering something he could see in Billy's face (as he no doubt was, since Billy wasn't trying to hid anything), and said, "Nothing is 'just' anything with you, Bills."

They turned and began walking again in tandem, silent accord, as with everything else.

"'S right," Billy agreed, and snaked an arm around Dom's waist, smiling a little as Dom turned his chin into Billy's neck for a moment, prickling at the tender skin there with his stubble. "I'm extraordinary, you know."

"I know," Dom said, smiling but serious, and beautiful with his face washed in pink by the setting sun. He leaned in, expected and understood, and their first kiss was just a soft brush of lips, and Dom's were soft like Billy had known they would be, even if they were a bit chapped.


End file.
